Franchise Insurance: New Sources of Value

FROM AN internal costs perspective, volatile insurance rates have caused massive headaches for businesses and their employees, with both usually sharing in the pain. Small businesses in particular—without the protection of better terms for companies that enjoy mass participation—often experience devastating increases.

In a tight economy, however, companies are always on the lookout for a value-add that can stimulate activity among the client base. The worse the economic conditions, the more creative the solutions to ferret out bucks from those tightly clenched spend budgets. And insurance carriers, which have often seemed in the driver’s seat of a one-sided market, are now showing a willingness to play ball, which could mean good news for printing franchises and other companies with multiple locations in a number of states.

Case in point: Allegra Network, which has 600 printing and sign franchises and an estimated 3,200 employees. In the past, franchisees of the Northville, MI-based company were on their own to secure and supply employee health insurance. The quality of rates and coverage was all over the map, according to Carl Gerhardt, corporate president and CEO, and dramatic rate spikes reached 25 percent in a year.

“For a small shop with seven to 10 employees, a 25 percent increase in health insurance costs basically comes out of the owner’s salary,” Gerhardt notes. “It makes a difference in how they eat. In recent years, our franchise owners have said that we need some kind of group plan, because it’s very difficult to join a plan with a small number of employees.”

In 2008, the company’s vice president of human resources, Laura Pierce, was contacted by the insurance broker for Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Michigan. In the past, Pierce had expressed an interest in developing a group plan for the entire chain, but BCBS balked. Pierce persisted, and BCBS of Michigan finally offered a group health insurance plan for the Allegra Network on three conditions: